


swallowing jupiter

by damnneovelvet



Series: to write or not to write [3]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Falling in Love at the End of the World, Ficlet, Gen, Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun-centric, Mixed feelings, Roommates, The world is ending, but in a car so they're carmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26821717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnneovelvet/pseuds/damnneovelvet
Summary: "We've done everything we could," Doyoung continues, voice hoarse, lips chapped and he smacks them but it's soundless, "right?"
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung
Series: to write or not to write [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913998
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	swallowing jupiter

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this along with [you go to my head](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26588113) for the little wonder fest, but the theme was roommates, and I made them carmates (?), so I didn't submit this. 
> 
> cw/tw: lots of mentions of death, allusion to a sexual act in one line
> 
> I wasn't planning to post this because it's not story enough, but I decided to do it anyway. Not edited. Have fun.

" _What we give to the poor is what we take with us when we die,_ " Jaehyun says, voice barely audible over the grumbling of the car engine. He vaguely remembers thumbing through the pages of a worn copy of 'The Exorcist' as a teenager. There is much to be remembered from it, sure, but these were the words that held his attention, and today, he feels them reverberate in his soul. 

Doyoung hums from the passenger seat. His mouth is pressed into a thin line but his eyes flicker in Jaehyun's direction before settling on the expanse of wasteland. 

The car lurches over broken stones and they jerk forward. Doyoung still doesn't speak. 

He rubs a dirty palm over his face and leaves it there to cover his mouth. There are mounds of dust collecting under skeletons of undergrowth, a stretch of heated asphalt, the remains of men and animals alike scattered as far as their eyes go.

"Won't you ask where it's from?" Jaehyun releases the pressure on the accelerator. 

The fuel tank indication started blinking a few miles ago and with no gas station in sight, they will roll to a stop before they know it. There's no reason to keep going.

"Are you alright, Doyoung?" Jaehyun asks. He reaches out to thumb at the bony protrusions at the skin of Doyoung's wrist. His veins are visible — dark and silent. Soon his arteries will be too if he keeps his mouth shut. They haven't eaten, not that there's much to eat anyway, and the last time they stopped was half-a-day ago.

There is no way Doyoung doesn't want to speak. Jaehyun had known him since the first cloud of dust appeared in their orbit, since they were in cream-coloured, elementary school pants and yellow bucket hats. He has a sharp tongue — kind, often invigorating, mostly motherly — ready to lash out at those unwilling to see what ruin they've brought upon themselves. He sits in a mud-soaked shirt with the scent of drying blood clinging to the lines of his stomach. Jaehyun wonders if Doyoung's skin will shrivel beneath his fingers.

Another minute passes. The engine stutters thrice as they cross an ominous sign-board by the roadside. The paint has faded only to be replaced by black handprints. The wood stands battered and splintered like fragile bones crunched between teeth.

"I'm okay…" Doyoung whispers. Jaehyun turns to look at him, grip loosening. Their stolen car has succumbed to the heat of its final journey. Tomorrow, it will be no more stardust.

"What are you thinking about?" 

Doyoung swallows hard — and it must hurt, Jaehyun feels, with how parched his own throat is — and sticks his tongue in his cheek before fixing Jaehyun with an unmoving gaze. He doesn't blink for however long it takes for them to come to a stop. With a final shudder, their vehicle becomes a heap of useless metal.

"The world is ending, Jaehyun."

"Yes, it is," he answers, because it is easy to say that with the nonchalance frightened adults have been stuffing in him, almost as if he was the nylon cover and filling him wet cotton — with lies — would turn him into a teddy bear. He would rot nonetheless, eaten away by the forces of nature, either broken down by fungal blooms or by the blazing winds that blow through cities exclusive to broken memories.

"We've done everything we could," Doyoung continues, voice hoarse, lips chapped and he smacks them but it's soundless, "right?"

Jaehyun wants to say _yes, we have,_ and he's almost ready to say it when he experiences the shiver of Doyoung's touch on his thigh, worn skin overworn denim. It brings back glimpses of nights spent in the back of abandoned tractors, in dusty beds with no springs, with tongues licking off the last bits of moisture off of each other and hot skin moving against hot skin.

They have done everything they could. Life is different when you know that everything will cease to exist before you reach the age where everyone is something and nobody wants to be nothing. 

"You can say that," Jaehyun says. There are things he is yet to do. Doyoung is perceptive — has always been — enough to trace the sizzling beneath Jaehyun's face with the tips of his fingers. There are secrets locked within Jaehyun even as they are doomed to watch the sky crack into shards and fall right where they wait to crawl into limbo.

"Do you remember when we were younger?" The corners of Doyoung's mouth lift into the semblance of a smile. Jaehyun doesn't remember the last time either of them had smiled genuinely, or laughed. 

Back when they were struggling to grow into their limbs life was bleaker than it is today, filled with incessant buzzing in the deepest recesses of their minds, even when the sun shone distantly white and the sky used to be blue. He looks past the dusty windshield and there isn't a single trace of the colour anywhere — everything is orange like the final spark of an ember. Now, when there is barely any life left, it seems to be burning with unbridled passion.

"I loved it. I loved being youthful." He says, closing his eyes. Jaehyun remembers brighter days, with trees and the joy of jumping into a stream. 

"Me too, I wish we could be younger again, and this time too, I would grow up with you." 

There is barely any sound in the world — only grizzly static ready to chip away the insides of his skull — but Doyoung is with him, and Doyoung deserves to laugh. Would Doyoung take with him carefree laughter when they die? Jaehyun hopes so. Jaehyun hopes Doyoung gets to take plenty of love and happiness past the gates of heaven because Jaehyun is his poor man and Doyoung holds the thread of his life safely even when his own hands quiver.

"There's something I haven't done yet." Jaehyun decides that if he ever has to take a fall, he'd rather take this one than the endless fall of possibilities. Who knows what's after death. He opens his eyes.

Doyoung tilts his head. His eyes remain glassy, peering into a future he will never have, and they cloud with regret. 

"I love you," Jaehyun says. He doesn't know. He has no idea of what is happening. In the distance, he is certain that the sun has vanished and there is rustling somewhere. Stars fall and the world is breaking apart into fragments that will never join to form the same bodies again.

"Do you really?" Doyoung smiles, searching to intertwine his fingers with Jaehyun's.

"I think so. I do love you, and I've never confessed to anyone this way."

"I don't think anyone has confessed this way. This is where we'll die, right? Our graves in the middle of nowhere. Very fitting don't you think." Doyoung says, voice low. It grates Jaehyun's ears as much as it soothes them.

"Not really. I had hoped to reach home before…" he trails off. Their demise? Their end? Isn't every end a new beginning, isn't he supposed to be waiting for a miracle, or a godmother, to whisk him away and let him soar through a body that doesn't fear waking up to the blade of a guillotine ready to chop off his neck.

"It's alright. I think it's okay, it _is_ fitting." Doyoung pauses. He takes in a deep breath — the ghost of his ribcage a permanent tattoo on Jaehyun's hands — and waits for a while before speaking, "So are we boyfriends now? If you've confessed your love to me, and I've accepted it, doesn't that make us boyfriends?"

"Maybe it does." Jaehyun thinks of wetness. He thinks of sharing floating rubber ducks in cheap inflatable pools with a lanky ten-year-old. 

He thinks of the last time he stood under the rain without fear, heart leaking tears at the seams as Doyoung's eyes bled for the injustice of it all. They deserved to be born in heaven, to those coddled with the promise of living long enough to see themselves with greying hair in the mirror. And then Jaehyun fondly thinks back to the time both of them had dyed their hair silver, sporting goofy smirks and attracting the stares of every person they walked past. They've seen each other, and that is enough of a mirror.

Doyoung's smile turns wistful. His eyes speak a thousand words, but Jaehyun doesn't know how to decipher whatever language it is that the other has chosen to speak. He never will. 

The steering wheel is slippery and Jaehyun pulls back his hands. There's no point in holding on, no amount of daydreaming will pull him away from the road.

"There's something I haven't done before either," Doyoung confesses, voice strained. It's not the sweltering heat, not the sweat pooling in his collarbones. It's a pain somewhere deep within that Jaehyun doesn't recognise that chokes Doyoung with merciless fingers.

"What is it? Maybe we can do that." Jaehyun suggests that even though he knows the probability of doing anything other than falling asleep tonight and waking up tomorrow to the flash of their sun blasting is impossible.

"I've never broken up with someone." 

Nothing changes in the air between them. Once, years ago when Jaehyun would seethe at the thought of Doyoung touching another person, his world would come to a halt. His ears would redden and his dimples would make a surprise appearance.

Now though. Now things are different. Jaehyun sniffs, the scent of decay finally finding him. He nearly gags but looking at Doyoung — uncaring for the emptiness beyond their shell — he doesn't. 

"Do it, Doyoung. If not today, maybe you'll never have the chance."

"Fine," he says, a tremor in his voice and a tremble in his hands, "I'm breaking up with you, Jaehyun." His grip tightens and Jaehyun's fingers almost lose blood flow. He holds back just as tight, unable to let go.

He chuckles — a broken sound but mirthful.

"We dated for a minute, but I was glad to have been your last boyfriend." It is the truth. Jaehyun will never admit it, but his unease vanishes and the tightness on his face loosens.

"Best minute of my life."

And maybe love is real. Jaehyun doesn't have a heart that flutters or a pulse that speeds so fast he could be euphoric, and he definitely doesn't have beautiful scenery to sing his heart into. He brings up Doyoung's hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles gently.

It's nothing like he would've ever wanted. He still doesn't want this, whatever this is, but it's all he has and he accepts it with all his being. A feeling that reminds him of love thrums in the leftovers of his soul as he watches a tree snap a mile from where he sits. A defeating crack. Then a whump. And there are clouds of brown and grey dispersed where there should have been butterflies swaying along with the wind. 

The heavens have chosen to doom purgatory. And in his heart, Jaehyun had always known purgatory was another name for earth. 

"That quote. The one about death and the poor. Where was it from?" Doyoung isn't smiling anymore, but he's facing Jaehyun, body turned and leaning against stained leather.

And it's all right. 

The world will end, and so will the tangle of thoughts in Jaehyun's head.

**Author's Note:**

> have a lovely day ahead.
> 
> \---  
> Lower your Shoulders and Unclench your Jaw:  
> [Keep check of your Mental Health ](https://checkpoint.carrd.co/#)  
> [ChilledCow Lo-Fi](https://youtu.be/DWcJFNfaw9c)  
> \---  
> [ Keep in check with the pandemic ](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019)


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